Inspired by this. There a lot of things GW2 does wrong, or needs improvement. But we spend so much time talking about these, sometimes we forget the stuff GW2 does right. It took me playing some betas of other MMOs to miss GW2, so I thought it would be fun to list some stuff GW2 does right.

1. No spawn camping; everyone shares loot

Seriously, how can any MMO still have "first tags" on kills? I'm so used to just getting credit for killing stuff that when in other MMOs I don't, I think it must be a bug.

On the subject of no spawn camping, resource nodes being individual is very nice for keeping open world PvE from being a cutthroat race to gather before anybody else can.

Incidental voiced dialogue: Sometimes it's the little things that help make the environment immersive. Whenever you're just standing around near any group of NPCs, sometimes you hear something new that you hadn't noticed before and this keeps happening no matter how much you play this game because they occasionally put in new VO without announcing it in any sort of patch note.

The combat system; being able to move around & cast is very visceral and fluid.
I enjoy the mobility one can have with the use of skills & dodging.

I like the dungeon reward token system. I remember in GW1 where you had to farm a dungeon 50 times and still not get the exact armor/weapon item you wanted. I like in GW2 how you get tokens amongst other end-rewards & you get to pick what you want from vendors.

I also love the dye system. I'm really looking forward to this wardrobe system. I think this will be a soon-to-be-added item on the list for me.

The more alt-friendly features, the better for me. In GW1 I always was an alto-holic with 10 max lvl characters. When things can be shared/accessible across your account, (like the wallet), I'm all for it!

Inspired by this. There a lot of things GW2 does wrong, or needs improvement. But we spend so much time talking about these, sometimes we forget the stuff GW2 does right. It took me playing some betas of other MMOs to miss GW2, so I thought it would be fun to list some stuff GW2 does right.

1. No spawn camping; everyone shares loot

Seriously, how can any MMO still have "first tags" on kills? I'm so used to just getting credit for killing stuff that when in other MMOs I don't, I think it must be a bug.

Unless you're wearing armor or playing a "soft role" that cuts your DPS down below the credit threshold.

1

It's okay to enjoy crap if you're willing to admit it's crap.Every patch is like ArenaNet walking out onto the stage of the International Don't Kitten Up Championship, and then proceeding to shiv itself in the stomach 30 times while screaming "IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!"

I like the trait trees , i like that I chose which points to spend and they are not spent automatically for me when i level up.
i like the ( in theory) that i can have a class with any build i want.
I like the vast variety of theoretical builds that can be achieved by using not only armor sets and traits but also sigils and runes, i like the special effects and not the plain stat increase.
i like that when i change the weapon i change the play style/skills,
( in other games nothing is changed if i switch sword to axe or staff to wand etc)
I like most of the dynamic combat.
i like that i can use crafting for my "mains" and not only for "alts" like in other games, i like that i can craft my endgame gear.
i like the world with almost no invisiwalls , i like the un-mapped territories and hidden mini-dungeons and jumping puzzles. ( i hate invisiwalls, i dropped plenty of games where the outdoors felt like dungeons with flowery walls rather that open world)
i like the graphics and the art style.
i like that i don't have to compete on resource nodes with other players
i like that (despite what people might say) they are actually banning farming bots.
i like most of the dynamic event mechanics and the illusion of dynamic world that they impose the first time you encounter them
edit: i actually like the WWW.

there are plenty things that i don't like, but i will not contaminate this thread with them.

http://massively.joy...rs-2-got-right/(...)Seriously, how can any MMO still have "first tags" on kills? I'm so used to just getting credit for killing stuff that when in other MMOs I don't, I think it must be a bug.

A lot of things in that article are plain false. For example, levels don't all take the same amount of time. Rewarded exploration isn't actual exploration, it's running around filling in the checklist. And so on.

Most MMOs only reward one set (xp & loot) per dead enemy to avoid zerging, and have tagging to avoid kill stealing.

I played once a week the first 6 months, so I lived the game rather than rushed it... And guess what, I missed out on nothing! (Maybe some gold but who cares)
So yea, you can determine your own pace if you want to...

Even though not hard-splitting PvP and PvE gives some issues, it enabled me to easily get several builds for all of my characters, of which many have proven succesful... Meaning it is easy to get into PvP...

It is rather easy to get exotic gear - so all of my level 80's are at least geared in such...

The combat is rather fun... You can say a lot about PvE encounters or the stale PvP meta, but the combat feels so fluent... This however is rather personal now that I think about it...

You can always expect the majority of the people to be in one place/map - meaning it is easy to socialize with people...

And last but not least - you can jump off cliffs... Bite me, but whenever I go back to GW1 I really miss jumping...

Anyway, the shared loot/nodes are still a huge point for me and an incredibly important one tbh - it actually helps foster a nicer community. When you roam around with the thought in the back of your head that you need to hurry up and be first to tag a mob or mine a node, then seeing someone else around makes you suspicious. "Is this person going to steal my mob? Should I now race that person because I was here first?". Seeing others around should be a fun part of an MMO, it shouldn't cause stress, irritation or worry. And it works too; though there are still people arguing about silly things in chat, most of the time people are much more laid back and helpful.

Also I do like the thought behind the bi-weekly updates, even if the execution leaves something to be desired. It causes a server to come together and play as a big raid (though it's not nearly as challenging as an actual raid) and it means something new to do every time.

I like the downed/ressing system as you can actually help someone out and it requires you making a split second decision; try to kill a mob fast so they can rally or try to res quickly between all the aoe. Or not res them; still a valid choice.

And finally I still like the way the game scales to allow playing alongside lower level characters, allow all zones to matter and prevent griefing (up to a point) by high level characters killing everything in leveling areas.

It's not perfect by any means but I think a lot of new MMOs should take a leaf out of Anet's book here.

Accessibility is done quite right. There are still issues (with new issues actually being introduced: getting rid of PvP UAX is one of the dumbest ideas A.Net ever had), but as far as I can see, accessibility is what puts GW2 on the map. (By accessibility I mean things like Wallet, deposit all collectibles, no racial restrictions, no factions, "UAX", guesting. ...)
Content is shit though. (And by content, I mean the things that accessibility allows you to do.)

Anyway, the shared loot/nodes are still a huge point for me and an incredibly important one tbh - it actually helps foster a nicer community. When you roam around with the thought in the back of your head that you need to hurry up and be first to tag a mob or mine a node, then seeing someone else around makes you suspicious. "Is this person going to steal my mob? Should I now race that person because I was here first?". Seeing others around should be a fun part of an MMO, it shouldn't cause stress, irritation or worry. And it works too; though there are still people arguing about silly things in chat, most of the time people are much more laid back and helpful.

This only half works. Sometimes people don't get shared loot even when they validly contributed, I've seen this all the time on dragon chests. Also there is still contention, now caused by (1) racing others to the right zone instance to get access to a world event, where the penalty for not getting there before everyone else is that you have to wait it out in an overflow, and (2) racing others to keep up with the champ train and get a hit in on the next champ before it dies - getting stuck on a piece of scenery may mean the vital second lost, and because the champ scaling is so bad they die in a matter of seconds; champ farmers wait for no man. Champs and world events are the new resource nodes.

One can complain about time-gating, about checklist wars and so on - while this may all be true, personally I find that this helps me maintain a healthy attitude towards the game. If I only have little time available to play, the game offers me a quick way to still make some progress through the daily rewards. If I have more time available, I can make additional progress, yet to me there will always be that one point where I think that I'm done for the day, because I'll much rather return another day when I can again benefit from the additional rewards.

To me, this is a refreshing experience. In other online-games I played in the past, I often felt like I had to continue for yet another activity and yet another and yet another...

That aside, I also like previously mentioned things such as the wallet or the pretty graphics

Commenting on the OP:

1. No spawn camping; everyone shares loot

Seriously, how can any MMO still have "first tags" on kills? I'm so used to just getting credit for killing stuff that when in other MMOs I don't, I think it must be a bug.

I would have wholeheartedly agreed with this a few months into launch, however, recent changes to the game made me feel like it's moving away from its originally clever implementation.

First of all, there is spawn camping. The most obvious one are the champ trains. There is even a damage-competition, which means that not necessarily everyone is sharing loot. The less obvious places for spawn camping would be the "revamped" world-bosses such as Tequatl and Wurm. Due to the current overflow implementation, you'll be camping these spawns if you want any real chance to successfully complete the event.

As far as sharing loot goes, I've already mentioned it above: While near-perfect, the champ-trains somewhat left an ugly dent.

OK guys. I have removed a couple of posts that did nothing but contradict what others liked about the game. Nothing wrong with posting in reply to someone's comment if you don't feel that it is correct, but don't go on a tirade about what is wrong with the game. The goal is to go into what people think is well done, not to argue about what isn't. And let's not do this backhanded "I will say something negative about the game in a way that sarcastically makes it seem like a positive at first glance" game. It is petty and doesn't contribute.

Personally, the dialogue of NPCs around the world is my favorite part of the game. Sure, some of the conversations seem forced, and I really feel there should be more of them in certain areas (more of a hubbub where you can't pick out conversations easily) but it adds a touch to the game I enjoy.

Many of the quality of life additions (the wallet and auto send to bank of crafting materials) are nice additions to the game. Map travel is tossed in here as well even though I think there is a bit too much of it. Traveling in the MMO is part of the system. Later zones should have less waypoints in more out of the way places. This also discourages zerging.

Being able to use leap skills out of combat to travel is something I think is overlooked but is a great addition to the game. It makes sense, is fun, decreases the amount of jumping people do, and increases travel speed.

I actually feel that the rewarding everyone that hits a mob with loot is a bad thing. Sure it sounds great at first, but it encourages zerging instead of grouping and is toxic to gameplay because of this. Making it so everyone in your party is rewarded is a much better system (and makes more sense) excluding some of the larger bosses. XP for everyone makes sense, items... it actually hurts the game more than it helps.

As an explorer I actually hate the POI/Vista system. It ruins my experience and is a sour note every time I feel one. Remove the icons, keep the notification of the name of the area (like walking into inner regions in a zone) and you get a nice combination of the two. There are some cool things hidden around for explorers without POIs or Vistas, but the vistas aren't there for explorers. We get nothing out of them. They are a system for achievers which is the group that is most pandered to in MMOs. It irks me that something that should be encouraged and rewarded for explorers has been taken from us and given to the play style that has the most to do. I am actually tempted to avoid vistas as an explorer (and there are some that I just don't bother to do) as they just don't give me any sense of accomplishment in the slightest. The strawberry garden, the secret house for the Order in the Shiverpeaks, the cave behind the gong gate, the tunnel in Malchor's Leap, the might buff in CM, getting on top of DR, secret room in the tomb, the organ in Ebonhawke. These are all great and for explorers. POIs/Vistas aren't.

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Little Mabel won't be able to be here it's our worst fear. She's busy working on her garden that she's growing up in space.

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I was thinking the exact same thing the other day: we are taking for granted the awesome features of this game, and you don't realize it until you go play something else!
1. Everyone gets loot.
2. Everyone get resources nodes.
3. It's sooo darn pretty. Each zone is unique.
4. No need to wait for a priest to rez you, anyone can help you out, and they DO!
5. Running and firing spells and the same time... I forgot about how awesome this was until I played another game and I was rooted to the spot. Sucky!
6. The dynamic way that NPCs run up to you and ask for help. Can be annoying but it's also very interactive and makes the world feel alive.
7. Getting XP for crafting and exploring and rezzing.

This only half works. Sometimes people don't get shared loot even when they validly contributed, I've seen this all the time on dragon chests. Also there is still contention, now caused by (1) racing others to the right zone instance to get access to a world event, where the penalty for not getting there before everyone else is that you have to wait it out in an overflow, and (2) racing others to keep up with the champ train and get a hit in on the next champ before it dies - getting stuck on a piece of scenery may mean the vital second lost, and because the champ scaling is so bad they die in a matter of seconds; champ farmers wait for no man. Champs and world events are the new resource nodes.

I agree, however in my opinion this is far less of an issue than mob tagging and the downright hostile environment that this creates. In GW2 people get pissed off at the game for having bad scaling or overflows, instead of getting mad at eachother.Besides, not all mobs scale badly and most of the time you can be there in time for a tag. I have been on champ trains where you're literally just running behind and missing a lot of the champs so I do know what you mean. That can be fixed with the existing systems though, by simply making it scale up more aggressively as I don't think these champs were ever designed to be farmed by large crowds.

I actually feel that the rewarding everyone that hits a mob with loot is a bad thing. Sure it sounds great at first, but it encourages zerging instead of grouping and is toxic to gameplay because of this. Making it so everyone in your party is rewarded is a much better system (and makes more sense) excluding some of the larger bosses. XP for everyone makes sense, items... it actually hurts the game more than it helps.

This is an interesting point... Due largely in part to the concept of everyone who 'contributes' getting loot and how this might accelerate the generation of wealth. The actual items doled out have to be worth a pittance to help combat inflation. Its probably one of the reasons you get the Daily and Monthly stuff versus the very very RNG chance to get anything decent from just playing the game, because tuning the world to be 'rewarding' at those population levels would also make the economy explode. Better throttle it.

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It's okay to enjoy crap if you're willing to admit it's crap.Every patch is like ArenaNet walking out onto the stage of the International Don't Kitten Up Championship, and then proceeding to shiv itself in the stomach 30 times while screaming "IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!"

This is an interesting point... Due largely in part to the concept of everyone who 'contributes' getting loot and how this might accelerate the generation of wealth. The actual items doled out have to be worth a pittance to help combat inflation. Its probably one of the reasons you get the Daily and Monthly stuff versus the very very RNG chance to get anything decent from just playing the game, because tuning the world to be 'rewarding' at those population levels would also make the economy explode. Better throttle it.

There is a cost to everything, of course. By letting everyone gather every resource is going to lead to lower prices. (Win/win in my book, but some will disagree).

So there is a price to the "everyone shares loot" principle, but the alternative of separate parties competing for kills sounds much, much worse.

There is a cost to everything, of course. By letting everyone gather every resource is going to lead to lower prices. (Win/win in my book, but some will disagree).

So there is a price to the "everyone shares loot" principle, but the alternative of separate parties competing for kills sounds much, much worse.

It is the price we pay for open world.

That's not how it actually works though if groups tag instead of everyone. There is no loot "sharing." If you shared loot the system would be fine (how most modern MMOs do it to get rid of the annoying tag and competition that it caused). Everyone gets their own loot table. No sharing at all. The only (literally only) situation that everyone benefits from the multitag system is with map central bosses. Trash mobs and champions encourage zerging which is one of the major complaints with the open world over other MMOs. The days of competition over mobs in older MMOs came from major bosses, not from the map filler mobs (excluding starter areas but if exp is shared then the competition here is moot as well).

Multiple systems are negatively impacted by the loot system: the actual loot quality, the social aspect of the game, the aesthetic feel of the world, and even the skill system (it puts even more emphasis on AoE focused weapon sets). Let me elaborate that the system that actually harms the game is that normal mobs generate personal loot tables which rewards zerging and causes insane overproduction of items. The personal loot table is a terrible system for an MMO community and is one of the most damaging design decisions in the game.

I think it has features that are good though. For hearts everyone hitting a mob gets credit and major monsters having personal loot tables. The current system as a whole has more negatives than positives though.

Edited by Feathermoore, 01 April 2014 - 06:42 PM.

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Little Mabel won't be able to be here it's our worst fear. She's busy working on her garden that she's growing up in space.

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The days of competition over mobs in older MMOs came from major bosses, not from the map filler mobs (excluding starter areas but if exp is shared then the competition here is moot as well).

This. The only reason to compete with mobs on an open-world map was for quest-related credit. Even Blizzard's changed that to sharing quest-related drops or kill credits. The only time tagging became an issue was in small zones, farming for very specific drops to those mobs.

Hearts pretty much supplanted questing and the rewards from them can only be given for karma and have zero trade value after you've bought them. Splittable kill credit isn't bad, independent loot tables are.

Edited by MazingerZ, 01 April 2014 - 07:09 PM.

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It's okay to enjoy crap if you're willing to admit it's crap.Every patch is like ArenaNet walking out onto the stage of the International Don't Kitten Up Championship, and then proceeding to shiv itself in the stomach 30 times while screaming "IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!"

I guess one good thing is the willingness to address what they perceive to be issues in other MMOs even if their solutions to those issues often cause more harm than good.

Combat has movement which is nice, even if movecasting doesn't add much any depth to the game. Its sort of fun because it's more reactive, even if the telegraphing is bad due to hitboxes being poorly synched to the animations, killing the point of being reactive altogether in higher level play.

Some armor designs are good with the right colors, but the overdone shaders make most of them look like cheap plastic in other colors.

The cash shop is technically fair and well-implemented in concept. It would be better if the game wasn't made to be so grindy in order to drive players to using the gem conversion.

1. The game does a good job of fulfilling the "play how you want" credo when it comes to handing out experience points for leveling. You can follow a very immersive path leading you into whatever area of the game you currently desire and still gain experience toward levelling.

2. The world is definitely the most beautiful of any MMORPG I've played.

3. Mobile caster classes.

4. I really like the DE system. As much as people said it was just a slight variation on traditional questing, it made all the difference for me. It's many magnitudes more immersive than the traditional quest hub structure. This is a mixed "GW2 does right", however, because I feel like this side of the game has largely been abandoned. Can you say GW2 does something right if it seems to have decided to ignore it moving forward?

4. I really like the DE system. As much as people said it was just a slight variation on traditional questing, it made all the difference for me. It's many magnitudes more immersive than the traditional quest hub structure. This is a mixed "GW2 does right", however, because I feel like this side of the game has largely been abandoned. Can you say GW2 does something right if it seems to have decided to ignore it moving forward?

The problem becomes the simple fact that there are many many things in the game that are more rewarding than DEs and easy ways to get there and back again, meaning you skip over any DEs in the game.

If they forced you trudge from place to place and had a more randomized boss encounter system (risk largely being people who would just never see the content without planning to be there when it spawned) you would probably see more DEs (and in fact, probably get more out of them because they would probably be the primary mode of play).

No, instead, you go and WP to kill a Dragon Champion, then WP back and sell. Profit galore.

If you're going to make the game's rewards, world and monsters generic (and its generic in a GW2 sense... its not like a theme park where you can end up in totally different zones... its more subtle in a D&D way in that the environs support different monsters, but those environs can exist in different areas of Tyria and they all drop the same stuff at different levels), you head can get away with making players work their way through areas unless you're putting very specific, rewarding content in an area (a dungeon, a champion).

Forcing people to cover the world in foot instead of teleporting would make them take in the system a bit more.

Of course, this is somewhat stymied by the fact that social tools are horrible and you have to in a specific area to speak to people in that area in a public forum (which isn't necessarily bad, GW2 doesn't have barrens chat).

I'm not saying remove WPing... but make it a very, very limited thing. A charge like a hearthstone, expensive to pull off... something you'd want to do to get into the field during at the start of a play session and then to go back to town at the end and wrap up for the night.

The DE system fails because people can avoid it and don't expose themselves to it until they're in the zone they want to be to complete DEs for the rewards.

Also, the overall rewards from DEs suck now that the karma system's been mitigated.

Edited by MazingerZ, 01 April 2014 - 09:22 PM.

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It's okay to enjoy crap if you're willing to admit it's crap.Every patch is like ArenaNet walking out onto the stage of the International Don't Kitten Up Championship, and then proceeding to shiv itself in the stomach 30 times while screaming "IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!"

Probably best thing they ever did was make this a buy-to-play game as opposed to subscription based game. That there was the single most important factor in GW2 current success.

I think the dynamic event system has probably changed the development of questing. Obviously they aren't originators of dynamic events, but they have shown other developers that it can be a commercial success if the entire game is built to support it. Which will encourage refinement from other developers as well as within.

The problem becomes the simple fact that there are many many things in the game that are more rewarding than DEs and easy ways to get there and back again, meaning you skip over any DEs in the game.

The DE system fails because people can avoid it and don't expose themselves to it until they're in the zone they want to be to complete DEs for the rewards.

That's not a problem at all. You might see it that way but players have not stopped doing DEs. The fact that you don't have to do a DE to reap quality rewards should be seen as a plus.